Nanowerk August 17, 2020 Plasmon-enabled light-harvesting technologies require a better understanding of their fundamental operating principles and current limitations. An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Germany) investigated photoinduced electron transfer in a plasmonic model system composed of gold nanoparticles attached to a nanoporous film of TiO2. Using time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy the researchers were able to count the numbers of transferred electrons. They found that only one in 1,000 photons generates an electron-hole pair and it takes less than a billionth of a second for the electron to come back from the titanium dioxide and […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of August 14, 2020
01. Demonstrating entanglement through a fiber cable with high fidelity 02. Electronic components join forces to take up 10 times less space on computer chips 03. Quantum researchers create an error-correcting cat 04. Scientists develop first quantum algorithm to characterize noise across large systems 05. Double layer of 2D materials unlocks crucial properties 06. Deep learning and metamaterials make the invisible visible 07. The Force of Nothingness Has Been Used to Manipulate Objects 08. Glass blowing inspires new class of quantum sensors 09. Data systems that learn to be better 10. Engineers manipulate color on the nanoscale, making it disappear […]
Army advances learning capabilities of drone swarms
EurekAlert August 10, 2020 The existing reinforcement learning schemes can only be applied in a centralized manner which requires pooling the state information of the entire swarm at a central learner resulting in increased computational complexity and communication requirements. To address this problem a team of researchers in the US (Oklahoma State University, Army Research Laboratory, North Carolina State University) is developing a theoretical foundation for data-driven optimal control for large-scale swarm networks, where control actions will be taken based on low-dimensional measurement data instead of dynamic models. It decomposes the global control objective into multiple hierarchies and a broad […]
Atlantic hurricanes linked to weather system in East Asia
Science Daily August 7, 2020 A team of researchers in the US (University of Iowa, Princeton University) has identified an association between the East Asian Subtropical Jet Stream (EASJ) during July–October and the frequency of Atlantic tropical cyclones during August–November based on observations for 1980–2018. According to the researchers the Rossby waves hitch a ride on the EASJ to the North Atlantic when tropical cyclones in the Atlantic are most likely to form. The waves affect wind shear, a key element in the formation of tropical storms. Rossby waves form within the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere because of the planet’s […]
Data systems that learn to be better
MIT News August 10, 2020 Filtering data based on predicates is one of the most fundamental operations for any modern data warehouse. However, schemes are hard to tune and their performance is inconsistent. Automatically optimizing an index for a particular dataset and workload suffers in the presence of correlated data and skewed query workloads. Researchers at MIT have developed Tsunami, which addresses these limitations to achieve up to 6×faster query performance and up to 8× smaller index size than existing learned multi-dimensional indexes, in addition to up to 11× faster query performance and 170×smaller index size than optimally-tuned traditional indexes…read […]
Deep learning and metamaterials make the invisible visible
Nanowerk August 11, 2020 Due to the diffraction limit seeing and recognizing an object whose size is much smaller than the illumination wavelength is a challenging task for an observer placed in the far field. Researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated that combining deep learning with lossy metalenses allows recognizing and imaging largely subwavelength features directly from the far field. Their acoustic learning experiment shows that, despite being 30 times smaller than the wavelength of sound, the fine details of images can be successfully reconstructed and recognized in the far field, which is crucially favored by the presence of absorption. They […]
Demonstrating entanglement through a fiber cable with high fidelity
Phys.org August 13, 2020 Researchers in the UK exploited a property of quantum physics that allows for mapping the medium (fiber cable) onto the quantum state of a particle moving through it to transport entangled particles through a commercial fiber cable with 84.4% fidelity. They sent one of a pair of photons through a complex medium, but not the other. Both were then directed toward spatial light modulators and then on to detectors, and then finally to a device used to correlate coincidence counting. In their setup, light from the photon that did not pass through the complex medium propagated […]
Double layer of 2D materials unlocks crucial properties
Nanowerk August 10, 2020 The interactions between the different layers in structures, held together by van der Waals forces, can give rise to entirely new properties. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, France, Japan) has succeeded in creating such a structure using double layer of molybdenum disulfide sandwiched between an insulator and the electrical conductor graphene on each side. If a voltage is applied to the outer graphene layers it generates an electric field that affects the absorption properties of the two molybdenum disulfide layers. By adjusting the voltage applied wavelengths at which the electron-hole pairs are formed in these […]
Electronic components join forces to take up 10 times less space on computer chips
Science Daily August 10, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – University of Illinois, China) used specialized etching and lithography process to pattern 2D circuitry onto very thin membranes joining the capacitors, inductors, with signal lines, all in a single plane. Then rolled into a thin tube and placed onto a chip. The circuitry can be tuned to achieve the needed electrical interactions for a particular device. They found the filters to be suitable for applications in the 1-10 gigahertz frequency range. According to the team the filters can be designed for other frequencies, including in the megahertz range…read […]
EmTech Asia examines emerging technologies and innovations during a pandemic
Asia Research August 12, 2020 At the EmTech Asia organized by MIT Technology and industry in Singapore forty-five of the world’s most influential leaders and innovators participated. They discussed how emerging technologies will influence industries related to artificial intelligence, robotics, sustainability, healthcare, immersive media, and more. It brings together technical experts from all over the world and connect them with industry people…read more.